Valley Views: U.S. can't ignore Syria's use of chemical weapons

10:38 PM,
Sep. 12, 2013

Matthew Murray

Written by

Matthew Murray

Neither the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime nor the relaxation of the normative prohibition against using chemical weapons will make the United States safer. The escalation of actions and rhetoric surrounding Syria make it more difficult to square the circle of achieving a political settlement while trying to exclude the Assad regime because of it its conduct.

The Alawite minority is too large a minority to just leave; it is too well-armed to be easily overthrown and any power-sharing compromise is a threat to its long-term survival. Fighting is the least-bad option for ...